GREP_OPTIONS='--color=always' causes non-printing characters
grep, non-printing-characters
Solution
The characters you see correspond to codes to change the text color in the terminal. Usually you would want `grep` to produce color only when its output is going to an interactive terminal. To do that, change
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=always'
to
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
Problem
My bash version: ``` GNU bash, version 3.2.49(22)-release (i686-pc-cygwin) Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ``` In my .bashrc, I have: ``` export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=always' ``` To reproduce the problem, create a file test.txt and write some lines: ``` test1: apple test2: orange test3: cherry ``` And in bash, do a grep: ``` grep "test" test.txt > 1 ``` When I check the result, I get something like this: ``` ~ > cat -v 1 ^[[01;31m^[[Ktest^[[m^[[K1: apple ^[[01;31m^[[Ktest^[[m^[[K2: orange ^[[01;31m^[[Ktest^[[m^[[K3: cherry ``` Any idea about this problem? btw, I've setup fileformats=unix.